Center Stage

Cliburn Competition: Preliminary Round nearing end

FORT WORTH –Wednesday marked the penultimate day in the Preliminary Round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, at Bass Performance Hall.

Alessandro Taverna (29, Italy) opened the day with one of the contest’s most enterprising programs. Obviously a well equipped pianist, he gave a stylish account of Mendelssohn’s Sonata No. 3 in B-flat major and nimbly negotiated György Ligeti’s Devil’s Stairway Etude. But he couldn’t make a compelling case for Nikolai Medtner’s Sonata minacciosa (menacing)—like Rachmaninoff, but with twice as many notes and half the tunes. The spirit of Messiaen’s Regard de l’esprit de joie, given a brutish performance, was of desperation and destruction rather than of joy.

Nikolay Khozyainov (20, Russia). What piano teacher would allow a 20-year-old, however gifted, to attempt Liszt’s B minor Sonata—let alone offer it at an international competition? Khozyainov managed passing moments of beauty, but he had no clue of the piece’s structure or significance. He treated it mainly as a vehicle to show how softly he could play and how loudly and fast. Virtuoso passages were just big messes of noise. The Liszt was prefaced by serviceable readings of Chopin’s Barcarolle, Berceuse and A-minor Etude (Op. 10, No. 2).

Alessandro Deljavan (26, Italy) has the competition’s most extravagant repertory of grimaces–and some out-of-tune moans–but he’s the rare contestant who actually seems to enjoy himself. Mozart’s Variations on Gluck’s “Unser dummer Pöbel meint” got a delightfully playful account, and Schumann’s Fantasy in C major a generously rhapsodic interpretation. Fortissimos got a bit overheated, but phrases were sensitively molded. After two over-long pauses that prompted premature applause, Deljavan directly segued into a quirky little Schubert variation (singular) on a Diabelli waltz.

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News, reviews, nuggets and tidbits from the local arts scene, including literature, theater, classical music, opera, dance and the visual arts.